Dw i'n wedi lladd hwyaden cyntaf heddiw.

Well the deed has been done. I killed the first of the ducks today. I created a killing cone out of an old traffic cone and attached it to a large oak tree in the woods near the duck meadow. The hatchet, from France, was sharpened until it was razor sharp and in one thud it was all over. Death seemed to be instantaneous and I feel happy that the duck felt no pain.

Plucked

The plucking was easier than I had anticipated. There are conflicting pieces of advice of whether to go with, or against, the grain. In the end I went with what seemed natural and the fastest.

I found a good site which gave advice on how to prepare the duck for the freezer. This guide from the Girl's Guide to Guns and Butter is an excellent aid to the task of butchering the duck and preparing it for the freezer.

I found an old bagging machine and we used this for the final freezer preparation. In addition to the bird, we have kept the gizzard, liver and giblets (neck and heart). The gizzard is the base for Salad de Gesier and ideal for lunch, I hope to make duck liver parfait as well.

There are four more to go later in the week and the freezer will now start to earn its keep. Overall an unpleasant task, but less distressing than I had anticipated. 

25th June 2012

Weather

This has been a very pleasant day. Mostly sunny with reasonable cloud and a gentle breeze. It never rained and was warm throughout.

Vegetables

The biggest problem we have had with weeds has been Galium Aparine or sticky willy. The onion and garlic beds were awash with it. This grows so well it covers the other plants blocking their light and throttling their growth. However, I have discovered that it may have uses. In addition to being able to be made into tea or coffee (as can anything; as long as you don't want a pleasant refreshing beverage) it is also edible - not in the raw state as the hairs, or velcro, are mechanically unpleasant in the mouth. The leaves, not the stalks, are cooked like spinach. We will try this tomorrow.

It can also be used to make a soft drink which is meant to be good for the skin. I have started an infusion and will report how it works (If I haven't got a job as a model with my beautiful skin).

The first earlies are ready and we have taken enough potatoes for tonight's tea. The peas and beans have come on well and will be ready to pick soon.

It seems that the strawberries were ready in our absence, our grandson informs us that they were nice.

Poultry

All the hens remain well barring the one with a prolapse. This seems less prominent and the others have not paid her any attention. We tried reducing it again and they have already been wormed with Flubivet.




8 eggs today, all quite large.




Ducklings will probably be ready this week.

Sheep

All seem well and continue to look better in their short coats. It is harder to tell the ram from the ewes at a distance, anything over 15 yards and we find that moving testicles are hard to discern.

Bees

The bees had wolfed down their syrup. The litre of syrup they had last week was completely gone. I have given them a layer of supers and will check them again at the weekend to see how they are getting on.

Visitors

There were no new birds to report this week, the same old tits, woodpeckers, heron and siskins. Wood wasps are around and quite large and vicious looking, however, what appears as a sting is the ovipositor and these are in fact harmless horntails.

Here comes the sun .. ..

The weather has remained mild and it has felt almost springlike. There was no great wind today and for the most part it has been dry. Little work was done in the vegetable garden but the aged, Tesco garlic bulbs seem to have survived and are now sprouting strongly. It is quite encouraging to see some green in the first raised bed.

The main work of getting the wood store ready for the winter goes on. I have started to work on the far side of the wood where there are a number of trees that have fallen and a number which need felled. With the fm radio on the phone and a set of earphones it is a pleasant place to listen to The Archers' Omnibus and Desert Island Discs.  The need for a good wood store has become more pressing as it seems that we are going to be able to reinstate the old wood-burning Rayburn in the kitchen

The biggest change over the weekend, however, has been the installation of the solar panels. We now have the ability to make 3.36 kilowatts although when they were switched on, just before sunset in the  winter, we only made enough (80w) to light a few dim bulbs. I am glad to say that the panels do not seem too intrusive and  blend into the roof quite well.

Be Prepared.

As befits January the theme over the last few weeks has been "Be prepared!" We have started on the vegetable garden and have broken open 6 beds. Digging a clay soil in the rain never gets easy but we have the foundation for raised beds and, as I mentioned previously, we have found some mature (and large) compost heaps which will come in handy.

We have also started to get ourselves ready for next winter. To ensure we don't freeze to death the wood pile has been started in earnest. With my neighbour's help we have a respectable start. Our festive period visitors enjoyed helping in this task as it also allowed them to return to the city with their car boots filled with logs.

Further, I was able to get a one-to-one tutorial on chainsaw use which should allow me to keep the same number or digits and extremities with which I was born. On the theme of education and getting ready, today also saw my enrollment in the local college's Welsh Course. Unfortunately there are perhaps too few course members to make this viable and it may be cancelled. So,  no sooner than I have learnt to say "Dw i' newydd ddechrau dysgu Cymraeg" than I am not !

The first fortnight

We have survived our first fortnight. We have moved in, without furniture which remains in storage, and have started to find out how things work. The house is sited jnside its land and the fields are clearly going to require sheep, or some other ruminants, to help us keep them in control.


The views are better than I remembered them with good aspects over Cadair Idris.

There have been a number of urgent tasks. We have started to look at our land and size up sites for a vegetable garden. We have discovered that the soil is largely clay so it will require quite a bit of work. We will need to work in a lot of organic matter into raised beds.

The first steps in this reminded me how difficult clay is to dig and prompted the thought that we might consider pottery as an alternative.

Most of the manuals suggest that, with enough work, clay soils can be fertile but they generally do suggest it is a major undertaking. We will need to look at local sources of manure.

We have made the hen-house so that we can arrange the flittings of our hens.  This came as a flat pack system and was remarkably easy to put up and much cheaper than the ones in the stores.


The shock of the move for the hens might be lessened when they discover that we intend them to share their new home with a cockerel.

The next major task has been to secure fire and wood. It prove very easy to set up the stoves and these have been very effective at bumping out heat. However, the collecting of wood has been much harder. 

A new axe made the felling of some trees reasonably easy work but we spend two days cutting this into a third of a cord. This work was dreadfully strenuous and slow. We alternated between the bow saw and, in desparation, an axe. However, after a trip to the local store and the purchase of a new saw we discovered the importance of a sharped and clean blade. Now we were slicing through logs like butter. A bad workman may blame his tools but bad tools do make a crap workman.

Clearly spring.

It is quiet clear now that we have left winter behind and that times are getting better. Indeed we have had unseasonably warm weather for the last fortnight. It has been hot, sunny and dry and the plants have needed regular watering.


I and the garden have been quite busy. I have riddled the two raised beds and  tried to keep up with the weeding.  We have been taking slug patrol quite seriously this year but due to the dry weather there   have been relatively few slugs .. so far.

The old faithful plants have started to show their heads above ground and the beans, potatoes and onions are clearly starting to get ready for the summer spurt.

All the seeds planted this year have been left-over from packets obtained in previous years. Often these have been free gifts with magazines. Some are past their sell-by date so we will await developments.


Even the apple tree has had blossom this spring.

The mystery seedlings that were damaged in the storm have started to develop. It unlikely that we will get a great crop from them but it is clear that we will get some lettuce, some cauliflower (if it doesn't bolt) and perhaps some celery.

Today we planted the peas (Kelvedon wonder which appratentl don't need supports) and started off the courgettes.  A final task was to clean out and refresh the herb garden with dill, thyme and basil.

We are still waiting for the spinach, which I think has expired, and the chard which is making a very poor show.

Taking the piss .. ..

.. .. out to the garden.

Urine has all the hallmarks of a great fertilizer. It is rich in nitrogen as well as having reasonable amounts of phosphates and potassium. Indeed, fertilizers are rated by the NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) system and in this regard the potency of urine is similar to that of proprietary fertilizers but with the advantage of being free. Research from the Stockholm Environmental Institute suggests that one person's urine can anually fertilize about 500 square meters.

Urine is probably too concentrated, when it is produced, to be used directly on plants. It should be diluted 8:1 with water, although other sources suggest stronger concentrations can be used. However, direct from the source, and undilutted, it can be added to the compost heap as an activator and as a useful way of adding nitrogen to a carbon heavy heap.

As there can be other salts in your urine it should be used around the garden. Apply at different sites each time and avoid always using the one site. When using the fertilizer it should be delivered to the plants roots not the leaves to avoid the risk of scorching.

As part of the drive to self-reliance we have decided that this is the next stage and will reduce our need for fertilizers. This, plus composting, should meet our needs. For reasons of practicality this will mainly be a male chore. I feel that we can probably allow visitors to skip this.

This is job number 1. However, there is an obvious job number 2, though this step is perhaps one too far at present. For those wishing more information about human manure I'd suggest The Humanure Handbook which can be downloaded here (or as kindle file here.)

Compost

Successful composting is one of the most valuable skills I am going to have to learn. If we wish to get anything out of the soil we are going to have to know how to put things back. After reading an article about compost trenches I decided to try this. This was also prompted by the failure of the rotary composter to have made any great dent on the woody material we had fed it 18 months ago.

As the second raised bed is empty at present and needed some attention it became the recipient of this attention. Steady rain made the work heavy, but after an hour we hopefully have a nourished and turned vegetable bed. Hopefully this lower layer of compost may act like Hügelkultur and warm the bed slightly over the months.

The plan this year will be to try the rotary composter again. However, this time we will have a more carefully controlled mix. We will aim for all the kitchen scraps a to leave via this route and augment it with the chicken dropping and bedding. Once we have the compost we will be able to use this handy calculator which I found on Skippy's Vegetable Garden Blog. The rotary composter should give a hybrid result between hot and cold heap composting but we will try for a better mix of green and brown items. Most sites list the following groups :-

Green Items (These are high in Nitrogen)

• Urine
• Nettles
• Grass cuttings
• Tea bags and coffee
• Vegetable peelings

Brown Items (These are high in Carbon)

• Paper and cardboard
• Wood and twigs
• Bedding from animals

The brown items take much longer to compost, as we found to our cost last year.

Today's visitors included :-

Avoiding Itchy Bottom Disease

This weekend we decided to try and make something of the rose hips at the garden gate. After a few hours collecting (This must be one of the few plants which is able to fight back) we had two pounds of rosehips and only mild blood loss from the scratches. We started to split the rose hips in order to remove the seeds and hairs. This was reported as essential as the hairs are the cause of the problem described by the Aborigines as "itchy bottom disease" which might be quite unpleasant if I could work out what the symptoms are. This was laborious and fortunately we found a recipe in Smallholder magazine which came to our aid.

In this recipe there is no need to de-seed the hips.

• Take two pounds of hips and turn them into a rough pulp in the blender.
  
• Boil them with 2 litres of water.
  
• Stain the pulp through muslin and keep the liquid.
  
• Boil the liquid until it has reduced by a third and allow to cool
  
• Add a bag of sugar and bring back to the boil.
  
• Boil for 5 minutes then bottle.
  

Then taste. It is almost like Marcel and his little Madeleine Cakes - memories will flood back and remind you of your childhood.

Heroin Safe Elderflower Cordial

Seeing the clouds of elderflowers everywhere we walk this month was a prompt for us to make Elderflower Cordial. This is relatively easy and the results are very refreshing and pleasing. All the recipes call for citric acid as a preservative and we first thought that this would be a simple matter ot calling into our local pharmacy. This prove to be a mistake. As citric acid is used for cutting heroin the pharmacists have stopped stocking it. Calls in various shops and a crawl of the web conformed the problem. The recipe below replaces the citric acid with lemon juice and seems succesful but I guess the longevity of the cordial (unless frozen) will be reduced.


Ingredients

40 elderflower heads (brown flowers are fine)

2 sliced lemons

20mls lemon juice

1.5 kg granualted sugar

2 litres boiling water

Instructions

Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water. Pare the lemons and place the zest and peel in with the elderlfower heads. Slice the lemons and add to the flowers along with the lemon juice. Add the sugar water mix and allow this to steep for 24 hours. After this strain through muslin and bottle. This will freeze if placed in a plastic bottle.

A new year, a new intention

Good Friday seems as good a day as any to declare that spring has started. We are now officially off on our horticultural adventure. This will be similar to last year, but unlike 2008, in 2009 we expect things to be subtly different. We intend that this year we will actually do it properly. This year we will grow a full range of vegetables and even amongst them those villains of last summer - beetroots and cauliflowers. These are described as "easy" vegetables in the books but they have defeated us two years running. They have either bolted (beetroot) or just failed (cauliflower). This year will be different. They should have suited our acid soil but we were only playing last year - this year it will be very different.

In out new, professional, industrious and energetic 2009 these prior failures will not be tolerated. We will not be happy with peas, beans and potatos. We will have leeks as thick as a baby's arm, beetroots like footballs, carrots like rolling pins, courgettes in abundance, salads you could drown under, onions that will make our neighbours' eyes water and cauliflowers as big as your head. We have the seeds, the ground, the intention. All we lack is the skill and knowledge - what can go wrong ?

Today the row of garlic went in and two rows of beetroot as its neighbour. This is later than last year so hopefully less chance of bolting - we will see.

Nicey and Blacky R.I.P.

May has been an eventfull month.

We had a visit from the foxes and they took two chickens. In the early hours of the morning (about 5 a.m.) the foxes took Blacky and Nicey. Only two piles of feathers and a little puddle of blood were left. Scabby has been on her holidays to Paisley but she has not fully recovered. Lonely, she doesn't use her perch but rather prefers to sleep in the nesting box. In a few weeks time we will need to get her new companions to help her through her P.T.S.D.


In the garden the shoots of progress have broken through and tender, green sprouts of our future vegetables have started to show. Today the leeks were planted out, the carrots thinned, and the courgettes potted. The lettuces which were transplanted last week seem very frail but perhaps not terminal.

In the house the tomatoes have been potted and the aubergines likewise. Growbags have been purchased ready for these when they ready.

The before and after photographs now have a noticable difference.

Standing back for better perspective

As spring presses on, so do we. There has been so much activity in the garden today that we have had to stand further back to take a shot than includes all of the patch. Todays newcomers were the beetroots, swedes, strawberries and runner beans.

The main recycling activity has been on the cloches where, in addition to lemonade bottles, we are now using coat hangers and shelf brackets to support polythene sheeting. Time will tell whether this works or not.

The photomontage helps reassure that there is some change.

Signs of Life

April is now here and so are its showers. Mainly hail-showers so far rather than any gentle raindrops bringing water to the soil. However, it signifies spring and the tension it brings – will any thing grow ?

We now have clear signs of life. In the cloche five little lines of green have spread from side to side. Each identical sprout of two leaves giving no clues as to what they are. The garlic bulb from Tesco has sprouted and has been moved outdoors.

To try and protect them, and to keep the recycling ethos, they have been given their own individual greenhouses. These fairy greenhouses, courtesy of 2 litre lemonade bottles seem also to be a useful defence from predators such as slugs or chickens.

A perennial question remains. Can one garden and recycle and remain fashionable ? I have considered this deeply and now have photographic proof that the answer, quite simply, is no.

Despite the aesthetic problems the patch continues to grow and now starts to resemble a vegetable patch.

Rain stopped play

For most of the weekend it has been dreech, either overcast and cold or heavy downpours. As a consequence little work was possible in the garden. We did get a row of onions (Stuttgarter) planted next to the potatoes but other than this and some weeding nothing else was possible. To further depress the spirits I was on call again this Sunday. In an attempt to get ready for the big break two other plans have been hatched.


Firstly we will try and reduce the red meat in our diet. I have no desire to fight with cows or bulls after retirement and could not bear to stick a pig. This will not be easy, especially as the popular press is waging a war to remind Europe that mince is a mainstay of our Scottish culture. There is no vegetable equivalent of mince (or the scotch pie) no matter what the continental lentil sellers suggest. We will take the easy way at first; dal, vegetable curries, vegetable pakora and chapatis will see us some of the way. Chips and pasta will help later. If in a few days we have become really desperate then the mung bean and fenugreek may have sprouted. We may have a party to celebrate.

Secondly, we may move to Wales and Lisa's cunning plan is that I learn Welsh. This has got off to less than a flying start. I have discovered many letters change randomly from one to another (P becomes B except after C having become G). I seem the rules for this are based on those which govern the date of easter and whether offside has been committed. Once I have overcome this hurdle I can grasp the joy of verb-nouns, grammer, pronunciation and a language with no simple single word of yes and no. All this makes the fact that “she” is said “hi” (he) a breeze.

Anway,
not to worry,
paid a becso !

With a little help from my friends

It would appear that yesterday's post reporting that spring had sprung was premature. Today's attempts to preserve sanity while on call was cut short by hail storms. Short and brief but hard and cold enough to cause us to abandon our endeavours early.

However, in the few hours we had we did manage to tame a further stretch of jaggy corner and the clivilised world has grown by a few more feet.






Our animal pals decided to assist. The canine contingent made the most noise but were by far the least productive. They managed to do little other than ruffle the feathers of our poultry pals who can be seen pleading for help. In between these interuptions the chickens did sterling work in eating many disgusting looking wrigging and scuttling insects which I am sure we can do without.
The chickens are by far the best in the household at recycling. They take everything we dont eat (by and large) and supply us with both eggs and composting material. Apart from the black hen, who maybe a satanic infiltrator, they are placcid and ever grateful and demand very little from others or life.

By the end of the afternoon we have managed to make some difference and this should be noticable on today's picture. We have also managed to create a coldframe by recycling the wood from the old hen run and using polythene from a matteress delivery.

The abandoned greenhouse now has a path and two good beds. There is even a feeling of purpose at this end of the plot.